


Home, Sweet Home

by HASA_Archivist



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 3rd Age - The Stewards, General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 08:52:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3762142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HASA_Archivist/pseuds/HASA_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young and impressionable hobbit pays a visit that will have far reaching consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home, Sweet Home

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the HASA Transition Team: This story was originally archived at [HASA](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Henneth_Ann%C3%BBn_Story_Archive), which closed in February 2015. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2015. We posted announcements about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact The HASA Transition Team using the e-mail address on the [HASA collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hasa/profile).

You can tell that the wooden fence has been freshly painted in early spring, the rose canes carefully unwound and laid on the bare ground, giving access to every lath. The gardener earns his keep year round, his clever fingers turned wherever the master here has need. Now, at high summer, that fresh white paint is all but lost under lustrous foliage which bears more sweetly-scented golden roses than most gardens boast throughout a season. Bright snapdragons wander in and out, and the spired flare of bellflower lends a clear blue balance to the insistent scramble of scarlet nasturtian.

The sun has warmed the path beneath your feet, and as you climb each step you feel the hard-set mellow beneath a film of moss; some tiny creeping plant flaunts a peppermint aroma at your every touch, a power far beyond its size. And you know that, though you scrub your feet as hard even as Mama might wish, the scent will lodge between your toes; that for days to come when you brush out your foot hair neatly, the room will be suddenly redolent of this place. Wherever, whenever after, you meet this sharp clean scent, there will be Bag End.

Wrought iron lamps may guard the door, but a swath of woodbine sprawls its perfume round their elegantly curling scrolls. Who now has any need of light beyond the moon and starshine, in the scant dark that divides midnight dusk from true dawn at its heels? The round green door stands wide - the welcome sure, the master's hospitality neither stinted nor in doubt.

Step inside, now, where deep roots quest a glossy, sinuous slide down cream-washed walls that gather light and cast it far within, to give the lie to those who say that airy and spacious are words one may not use about a smial. Over and again, that light shines up from chair or panelling, tiled floor and brass-bound chest, all polished to a gleam that simply begs a stroking hand (Does that gardener never rest? This must be his work, the only servant kept.)

Though sunlight fails at last, in the inner reaches of the Hill, here candle, lamp and hearth-flame tell the comfortable tale, for here are warm, snug parlours, guest rooms, pantries stocked to gladden any hobbit’s heart. Everywhere breathes the contented sheen of a life well-lived, of a home well-loved.

 

You may be just a visitor, a minor cousin many times removed, but this place calls your heart as nothing ever has or will. These first sharp pangs of thwarted longing strike hard and cut deep. Though the joy may wither and the love decay to envy and to spite - though you must wait for years past counting - you _will_ have Bag End to your own.

One day.


End file.
